Savvy students embrace crowdfunding for research
June 5, 2016 by Dr. Letitia Wright
Filed under Crowd Funding, Featured Articles
crowdfunding
Savvy students embrace crowdfunding for research
While research is a critical piece of academia, the pursuit of knowledge isn’t free.
A nationally shrinking pool of money for research projects has led several academics from Ohio universities to raise smaller amounts of capital through the nontraditional means of online crowdfunding.
University of Akron fellow Bor-Kai “Bill” Hsiung recently harnessed crowdfunding to help pay for his biology-related research project. Using Experiment.com — a site billed as a platform for enabling scientific discoveries — Hsiung entered a competition for research ventures based on unusual animal traits like a gecko’s sticky feet or the improbable punching power of the tiny pistol shrimp.
Hsiung’s work aims to mimic the nanostructures of tarantula hairs. Like his fellow Experiment.com competitors, the Taiwan native listed his proposal for friends, family and the general public to review and contribute to. The project raised $7,708 — putting Hsiung in third place overall — which garnered his research an additional $250.
Hsiung, who will use the funds to create 3D nano-printed models of spider hairs, said the long, arduous grant-proposal process motivated him to try a different form of fundraising.
“A grant to the NSF (National Science Foundation) takes three to six months to prepare, and you won’t hear the results for another six months,” Hsiung said. “Even if all goes smoothly, it can take a year or longer to get the money.”
As government grants can run into the six figures, asking for a relatively small amount via crowdfunding was the logical choice.
“It’s definitely hard work. You have to allocate time to market your research,” Hsiung said. “I learned how to communicate scientific ideas in a simple manner everyone could understand.”
Dr. Todd Blackledge, professor of biology and the Leuchtag Endowed Chair at University of Akron, said crowdfunding sites like Experiment.com are emerging in parallel to declining university research budgets. Federal support for all study and development, meanwhile, has fallen 16% over the past five years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“Accounts my students were counting on for grad research are being cut off,” Blackledge said. “There is no other way to fund these projects.”
The speed and flexibility of crowdfunding is particularly important for scientific research, insofar as events like the El Niño weather phenomenon have a shortened window where effects can be studied.
“The first couple days of the funding process are especially important,” Blackledge said. “There’s a chance to build positive momentum, but if you fall behind it’s hard to catch up.”
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, launched a crowdfunding site called HawksNest in April. The platform allows faculty, students and staff to post a project for funding. An internal review team vets the proposal, which remains on site for a maximum of 45 days after approval.
James Oris, Miami’s associate provost for research and dean of its graduate school, pointed to crowdfunding’s ability to get small-scale requests off the ground. HawksNest organizers encourage cash-seekers to scale down the scope of projects if costs exceed $6,000.
“We’re also tapping into an alumni base that supports these projects at smaller values,” Oris said.
Crowdfunding for academic research has its drawbacks, some observers say. For example, the relative speed with which group-sourced money is raised negates the peer-review process that ensures dollars are being spent for their stated purpose.
However, HawksNest projects undergo a thorough review by program administrators, Oris said.
“Our main point is to find different ways to expand research and scholarship opportunities for our students,” he said.
Lauren Fussner, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Miami, is lead investigator on the first undertaking successfully funded through the school’s crowdfunding site. Fussner’s project, which identifies risk factors contributing to depression and eating disorders among adolescent females, raised $580 from 10 contributors, surpassing its original goal of $525.
It’s a modest amount, admittedly, but Fussner said she is thankful to receive funding to compensate participants involved in the study. In seeking donations, Fussner and her partners posted pertinent information to their social media accounts. The project leader also used contacts from her University of Notre Dame undergraduate alumni group to further market the effort.
“I was genuinely excited to share my project, which I believe helped others understand the importance of the work,” Fussner said.
Frustration with the unpredictable, politically motivated nature of science and academic research funding led Cindy Wu to co-create Experiment.com — one of a growing number of websites dedicated to advancing the findings of researchers. Introduced in 2012, the site has backed projects in economics, physics, biology and medicine.
Like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sources, newspapers — delivered FREE to your inbox every morning. Sign up for the Morning Newsletter.
Let me share why this is significant: As Americans sort out how they want to pay for education, crowdfunding is a clear option. Students will have to take the forefront. Most universities have a crowdfunding page or site, however, students do not have to rely on that. They can take matters into their own hands and move their projects forward.
You can read the rest of the Article Here
Want to know more about Crowdfunding? Get your Free report and get started now! Click the book below to Download it!
Start Here: 
Crowdfunding a School in Otoase Nsawam
June 3, 2016 by Dr. Letitia Wright
Filed under Crowd Funding, Featured Articles
James Gadson travels several times a year to East Africa. He has been working with a few orphanages and small villages His plan is to get $35,000 to help finish a much needed school in Otoase Nsawam. The funds will be used to complete building construction, desks, books, a school bus and provide a small budget for full time staff. The facility, once complete, will have clean water, provided by a pure water system and off grid solar power. He wants to finish this project, however funds are running low.
Long term benefit:
Underprivileged communities would have education extended to children who would consequently be future leaders of the community and the peaceful nation of Ghana at large.
You can support this project herehttps://www.gofundme.com/nsawam
Understanding Your Personal Strengths
April 2, 2016 by Dr. Letitia Wright
Filed under Featured Articles, Front Page
Understanding Your Personal Strengths
Remember that working doesn’t have to feel like work. That may seem like a contradicting statement to many people out there, but it’s the truth! When you look back on your life, you want to make sure that you worked a job you didn’t hate and learned a lot about it as you went. It’s not expected that you go to work every day so excited that you can’t sit still, but the ideal goal is to have a job that makes you feel accomplished at the end of a work day.
If you want to get your dream job, you have to know where your strengths lie, that’s what determines where you should work.
Your personal strengths are not the things that you enjoy doing, necessarily. Your personal strengths are those characteristics that are natural to you in a way that doesn’t feel like work: they are skills that you’re interested in developing, topics you’re interested learning about, etc. They’re different for everyone, and you learn what your personal strengths are by experiencing and learning about different topics and skills. This include: leadership, problem solving, organization etc. That’s not to say that you have to love all of these tasks with every fiber of your being, they’re just skills that come naturally to you.
It only makes sense that you will want to work in a job and an environment that encourages you to use these skills, right? Think about your current position. Surely you can think of someone in your workplace that is a go-getter, ambitious, and always seems to begging the boss’ attention, right? S/He is the one who is always in early and seems to take joy in everything that goes on. This is the perfect example of someone who is in the perfect niche for their personal skills. They are doing a job that they love and that is tailored to their personal skill set. The good news is that everyone has a personal skill set that can be identified, developed, and used to make you and your employer happy.
The University of Kent offers a test that will tell you exactly what your strengths are. By asking targeted questions and other professional methods, you will be able to get a list of what your personal skills are. With that list, you can target your job search and start to look for jobs that put to use each of these special skills that are a key part of your personality. In the interview process, you’ll find that your potential employer will see your enthusiasm for the job and be more inclined to hire you because you make a good fit.
When you get into a workplace that maximizes your personal skill set, you’ll know it instantly, if you didn’t when you were applying. Coming to work will no longer be a chore, and even on the bad days, you’ll still feel as though you are being useful and getting things done. You’ll scale up the professional ladder faster or at par with your coworkers and may even thing “Whoa, already I have a promotion? That was fast.” The thing is, employers watch for passion on what you’re doing, and the best way to find that dream job is by finding one that lines up with your personal skills.
No matter what stage you are at in your life understanding these skills is important. It’ll help you target workplaces, but it will also help you plan out your future if you are looking at schools and professional courses. Knowing your strengths will help you choose an educational direction to head in, whether you know what they are before you start, or discover them while you do it. This will steer you in the right direction so that you know how to plan our your education, and then the right career path will make itself known to you.
Knowing what your personal strengths are is essential to doing well in a workplace, as mentioned, but not just in being happy. Your superiors will recognize your effort to do a job well, even if you feel as though you are not putting in all that much effort at all. You will succeed in your career path much faster and easier than in a job that doesn’t allow you to use your skills. As with any position, your skills with strengthen and your weaknesses will become less noticeable. Being in the right workplace will give you space and time to develop, strengthen and use these important personal skills to everyone’s benefit.
Once you have these skills figured out, you are able to identify what your dream job is. Many people feel “okay” with their jobs, but not a lot love what they do. By simply understanding how important your personal strengths and skills are to the process of identifying and flourishing in your dream job, you’ll be able to make that dream career become a very honest reality. Remember, we aren’t talking about “I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut/power ranger, etc.” This is something along the lines of “I’ve always wanted to work on my carpentry/leadership skills, etc.” These jobs are out there and ready for you to put your natural skill set to the test as soon as you ready to try something new and exciting.
Your natural and personal strengths make you unique from everyone else in the world around you. People may have the same strengths as those close by, but no one can ever do things the exact same way that you do. So, take advantage of that and develop your strengths on your own. Take the test offered at the University of Kent and see for yourself what those skills are. They’ll lead you to the right career path for you and you, your loved ones, your employer, and the world in general will benefit form it. Work doesn’t have to feel like torture: make sure you’re in the right place for you and your skills.
